Matador Charters Fishing Report

Hatteras offshore bottom fishing

Tuesday May 01st 2012 - 15:00 AM EST

Added by: Jake Hiles

This weekend we had a group come down from Delaware and they were supposed to fish with me saturday and sunday. The weather was kind of nasty and I wasnt booked monday so they opted to just fish sunday and monday.
The weather sunday was cloudy and overcast with northeast winds around 15mph. These arent the calmest conditions, but the group wanted to try some bottom fishing and northeast winds help to make it possible to drift for bottom fishing. We started out by the rockpile. We went to a grouper hole and immediately started catching groupers. We threw back a bunch of 10#ers and caught a 20#er as our keep fish. (We are only allowed to kill ONE GROUPER PER DAY NOW AS PER FEDERAL REGULATIONS, which in my mind is utterly stupid as there are plenty of grouper down there. Also, We were infested with 2-4# seabass, which we cannot keep because they are out of season. I dont know who designs the fisheries regs, but the fish they are trying to protect because in their minds they need protecting as so thick you cant catch anything else.)
After catching our lone grouper, we tried jigging for amberjacks and made quick work of a limit of jacks up to around 40#. Then we went bottom fishing and caught a bunch of nice triggers. We also caught this gorgeous queen triggerfish which is fairly rare for North Carolina. We ended the day trolling on a very broken weedline in 30 fathoms and caught a couple of gaffer dolphin before calling it quits for the day.
On monday, we went north. The group wanted a short day because they needed to be back to delaware that night. There had been a good bite of blackfins at the 230 rocks the day before and we started working that way. We caught a dolphin on the troll. No blackfin bites. We went a good ways further north to a tilefish hole and it was overrun by seabass. The seabass were so thick a bottom rig couldnt even hit the bottom without being bit. We also caught a bonita mackerel and a bonita on the jig there and had some large shark encounters. After being swarmed by the seabass, we began trolling home. We had a couple nice dolphin bites and called it a day.
If the grasslines would get together, there should be very good dolphin fishing. There are still some blackfins and yellowfins on the rocks for those willing to work at it. The wahoo bite has tapered off. Some marlin are showing and the cobia should be thick as thieves any day now. Everything is in motion for may to have some really good fishing.